“I’m sorry, guys. I love you.”

“Thea! Thea!”

I turn and race down the stairs, ignoring their calls, the despair in their voices, and the frenzied banging on the door. I don’t know how long that rope will hold, or how long the door will stay intact, but it’ll buy me time.

I drop their cell phones on the kitchen table, grab my car keys, and lock the front door behind me. I don’t want to take their phones with me in case there’s an actual emergency. Plus, I don’t need to keep them hostage, just make sure they don’t follow me.

Aiden’s car sits innocently in the driveway and Mason’s is parked at the curb. As I open my car door, I hear the boys yelling at me. They’ve opened my window, and for a quick moment I panic. Will they actually jump from the second story? No. They wouldn’t.

“At least tell me you’re still going to Sweetie’s,” Mason calls down to me.

I pause right before I get into my car and look up at all of them. The three of them are crowded around my window, staring down at me with concern and horror. My eyes meet Aiden’s, and my heart breaks when I realize he’s looking at me with a stoic impassiveness, like he did when he first met me.

I wrench my eyes away from him.

Stick to the plan.

Without answering, I hop in my car and drive away, all the while forcing myself not to look in the rearview mirror, to block out the memory of their voices, to ignore the breaking of my heart, to harden myself to the fact that this might be the last memory they ever have of me.

When I pull up outside Luke’s apartment, Annalisa’s already standing there. I’m almost shocked that she actually showed up since her tone wasn’t encouraging on the phone, but I’m just so relieved that Tony decided to meet me instead of track her down—relieved that he’s nowhere near her. I pull up beside her car and cut my engine, checking the time.

Twelve minutes.

I’m cutting it close but the meeting place isn’t far from Luke’s apartment.

She’s leaning against her car when I emerge, her eyes lined with the dark eyeshadow and eyeliner that make her glaring blue eyes pop. Eyes that are apparently like Sabrina’s.

“Thanks for meeting up, Anna. This won’t take long.”

She crosses her arms across her chest. “I only came because on the phone you said it was life or death, and by your tone I believed it. But I’m still pissed at all of you.”

I have to do this quick before I chicken out. “I know, and that’s fine, and I’m about to piss you off even more, but I don’t care because you deserve the truth and I don’t have much time. I don’t know how this is going to go but I may never get the chance to tell you.” Eleven minutes.